Curating.info

In this interview, Bill Arning, the curator of exhibitions at the MIT List Visual Arts Center, and Patricia Fuller, curator of public art, discuss MIT's public art collection. The collection was recently named one of the ten best campus art collections in the United States by Public Art Review.

The interview is brief, which makes the comments on conservation of public art stand out in their frequency. I suppose it is a classic problem, that new acquisitions are sexy and are relatively easier to find funding for, while the maintenance and preservation of acquired works is a harder line item to sell to a donor or funder. Of course the ways in which art is funded varies widely from country to country, so we need to analyze this situation in an American context. What is made clear in the interview is that the List Center could use more money for conservation, and what is made clear by looking at the map of MIT's public art (link to the map below), is that they have many pieces, which must have required a great deal of money to acquire. We can make some assumptions based on that, I suppose.

Read the article here: List Curators Discuss Evolving Face of Public Art.

You can download a map of MIT's public art pieces by clicking here.